National Open Access Repositories: Strengthen and Align Ireland’s Network of Open Access Repositories

Presenter: Dr Christopher Loughnane

Project Manger of the National Open Access Repository Assessment and Alignment project funded under the NORF Open Research Fund 2022.

Abstract

This talk gives an overview of a two-year NORF-funded project to align Ireland’s network of Open Access repositories metadata standards with international best practices. The talk outlines the project’s aims and objectives, highlighting ongoing work including a survey of institutional repositories’ metadata practices, interviews with repository managers, and interviews with strategic national stakeholders and international leaders The talk focuses on what we discovered through the data-gathering process, and how we are using the process to engage and build community support for OA metadata guidelines and compliance. Based on the findings at this stage, we describe how we aim to facilitate a national consensus on adopting international metadata guidelines for open access for institutional repositories. The project currently plans to do so by fostering community agreement, developing community guides, and establishing a sustainable governance infrastructure for managing and updating this work. The talk concludes by previewing results due in December 2023, including an inventory of repositories and an Irish repository landscape report.

About

Dr Chris Loughnane is an experienced manager of projects, people, and services, in cultural heritage and library environments, with degrees in English Literature and Library Science, and a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Glasgow. He has worked since 2010 as a librarian, archivist, researcher, digital project consultant and educator, in libraries and research institutions in the UK and USA, including university research centres, museums and archives, public libraries, and as library director in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. He has long-standing professional and research interests in open access and open science but is also interested in a wide range of philosophical issues centred on human interactions with technologies and information environments.